I volunteered at the Starfield concert on Monday Nov. 30th. I was truly blown away by the bands support of World Vision. The 2 lead members of the band had visited Zambia with WV and so at the break, they showed a short video of their visit to a village and told the story of how during their concert tour they had decided to get all the children in that village sponsored. We had 35 children left that evening and all were sponsored as well as 20 more!!! In total they found sponsors for the 1300 children that village, plus more! That's just the most amazing thing I've seen. The funny part was, that most of the concert goers were quite young and I had been thinking that no one would be sponsoring kids as these were just kids themselves and wouldn't have any money.Goes to show we really have to watch our mind sets, especially as we get older because, boy was I wrong. Was such a great feeling to be a part of that!
I've done 2 small craft sales and raised $55.00 towards the gift Catalogue fund-raiser page that I have at https://catalogue.worldvision.ca//gifts/event/263978
where my total is now up to $190.00. Not as much as I had hoped, but hey, every little bit helps, it's all like the proverbial stone in the pond with the ripple effect. I raised about $150.00 towards my next trip, as well, which I should hear about in the next few days. So that will be another post. As our family gift we stocked a medical clinic, which I discovered grows 13 times in value, so it's quite an amazing amount of things that will go to a clinic. We also donated to Nikki's community and WV sent the neatest slide show of children having birthday celebrations because of the donations and at the end was a short video and on it, at the very beginning was Mumsy, from South Africa, who went with me when I visited Nikki! It's hard to describe how I felt when I saw that video and her there. It was very special. Want to check it out?
http://www.worldvision.ca/ContentArchives/content-stories/Pages/birthday-joy.aspxWe received a letter from Fundiswa a little while ago, and she thanked us for the vegetable seeds we sent. She was also interested to learn about our family, what we like to do and mostly what we like to eat. I had made up small books for her and Nikki ( on Blurb) when I got home from my trip, to tell them about Canada (hoping the ink won't run in that) a small photo album of some of the pictures I took while there and a short book I had found in the airport in Jo'burg, that was written in Zulu and she really seemed to like that. She told us she has 2 brothers, one older age 11 and one younger age 3, she has no father and lives with her mother. She also sent photo copies of her school picture, but it was to dark to try and copy to post here. I always find it such a great joy to receive these letter from the children.
We also received a letter from Nikki last week. It was rather funny, because he had written the letter in English this time, but the writing was so small that I had to get out the magnifying glass to try and read it. With Angela's help, we finally got through the first page, with some semblance of understanding, and turned to the second page where I discovered the Fifikile (the development worker for WV) had translated it for me. Should have checked the next few pages first! I had asked him a number of questions, that I hadn't thought to, while visiting and he tried to answer all. I had asked about the different rondevels and he explained that each one was used for either sleeping quarters for the adults, with the children having a separate one (at least that's what I think it all said), one for cooking, one for leisure and by the sounds of it they are building another, as my understanding is that Nikki will get his own as he becomes a teenager. I may have it all wrong, but that is my understanding of the explanation. I had also not thought to ask about their water and he told me they walk for 2 1/2 hours to get water from a spring and that is why they have the donkeys (I'm sure it's farther down that mountain we had to climb to visit him). We asked for Angela to be given a Zulu name, as I now had one ( Busisiwe, means blessed) and Granny named her Sthokozile (happiness) which she was extremely pleased with. There was also a number of other questions that he answered for me. I got the biggest kick out of his comments on the book I made on Canada. I've never been called brilliant before! I think he believes that I actually knew all the things I had put into the book about Canada and the animals, so I will have to explain that I found most of it on the Internet, although I would still like to be considered brilliant. He also said that I was a wonderful mother (grandmother) to Angela and that he hopes she grows up to have my qualities. Doesn't that just wrench your heart? My greatest hope is that someday he will become the doctor he wants to be and will be able to travel to Canada and find us to visit in years to come. They sent this very sweet picture of him, his sister and the new baby. I hadn't known there was a baby when I went to visit so I sent a set of sleepers, so the picture shows the baby wearing them. The picture is very poor, but I've copied it anyway, cuse it's so special to me.
That's about all for now, I'm going to head to bed. I'll write as soon as I hear any information about my next trip.Sala kahle
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